


Floating

by GalekhXigisi



Series: Sink Or Swim [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Burns, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Child Abuse, Character Death, Child Abuse, Drowning, Drug Addiction, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Scars, drug overdoses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 23:41:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18398729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalekhXigisi/pseuds/GalekhXigisi
Summary: I don't remember what I was doing here and what tags I should add.I think I'm going to make one more chapter and call it Swimming as a final resolution. Anyways, VOLDIX, specifically, I did not plan on making another chapter for this, but you asked for it and I figured I could continue on with the idea.Please join my Discord server!https://discord.gg/eGkwayyCome and talk to me, too!!Tumblr: GalehkXigisi or Transheman (May not respond, Tumblr is a buggy bitch)Instagram: Todorokishootme or Assbutt666Discord: Shooketh Whomst#2679Twitter (SFW): DavenderLavTwitter (NSFW): DaveyWinchesterKik: AdrienSatan





	Floating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VODLIX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VODLIX/gifts).



Everything feels far too cold, as the boy realizes slowly. It’s similar to the feeling someone gets when their shower water is too hot, hot like fire, searing skin passionately with harsh annoyance and stapling glares that left scars that looked like acid had rained down and patted their back harshly. Klaus thinks he knows what that’s felt like, but he honestly isn’t exactly sure. His memories are so cloudy, clouded over with the fog of death. Death? He thinks it’s death, but he honestly can’t tell. It feels like someone stuffed his entire mind full of cotton, though, he knows that much. 

 

He’s sitting in water. Or, well, floating through the harsh currents. He feels like he’s drowning, face just barely floating above the water. The only other thing that isn’t completely submerged was his fingertips. Even so, they were struggling to stay afloat through the harsh water. His ears are submerged. With even his eyes shut so tightly, he can hear the yells that came with spirits. They screamed his name, fading in and out of existence. He hands came to cover his ears just as he was submerged beneath the water, face falling as well. Klaus made an attempt to at least have some sort of air in his lungs, just in case. It was good that he did. 

 

_ Klaus, _ came a sudden scream in his ear. It was two voices, feminine and screaming in distressed. They sounded like Vanya and Allison if they had screamed in perfect harmony. He feels like someone is shaking his entire body, pulling him roughly. It didn’t feel like they were attempting to save him and pull him to the surface. In fact, it felt like they were pulling lower into the water. He opens his eyes the instant he feels pressure on his throat like someone was attempting to suffocate him then and there. It wasn’t like he wasn’t already suffocating. 

 

As soon as they snap open, he’s face to face with a corpse. This corpse, though, doesn’t look like it should. It looks like someone that drowned, yes, but it had his  _ brother’s _ face, specifically  _ Diego’s _ face. He screams, bubbles let out of his throat as he does so. He was losing air and rather fast. Klaus pushes away the corpse. Diego’s eyes are pure white, unlike most of the other spirits he had seen. This Diego was the older version. Had he  _ actually _ died and been put into his own personal Hell? He wonders that as something suddenly wraps around his ankle, jerking his down and out of Dead Diego’s grip. 

 

_ Klaus, _ three voices sink up at the same time. One of them is just like Ben’s before they had done their whole  _ Time Jump _ shenanigans and had just jumped straight into an ocean. It was a tad garbled by another voice that sounded just like Ben’s voice when they were teenagers. The third voice was corrupted. It was the same, exact voice that he had grown up with, knowing it as  _ The Horror _ that resided inside of Ben. His eyes jerk down to find Ben below him, jerking him down with a tentacle attached to his ankle, suction-cupped there. It pulls him down with another jerk. Ben looks like an adult there, too, face flickering between young and old every split second, making everything blur, but it’s mostly his adult structure. The tentacles glow as brightly as can be. Blue lights up around them, setting Ben alight, too. 

 

Klaus screams again. A tentacle moves to wrap around his neck and ends up covering his mouth and nose. Spots dance in front of his vision as other ghosts dance around him, his siblings all just rotting corpses like the others around him. However, Klaus focuses on Ben’s voice.  _ It’s your fault, Klaus, and your fault alone, _ they speak in corrupt tones, all his siblings joining him. The others around them scream his name. They beg for his attention, reaching and clawing. Physical manifestations leave harsh burns behind their touch, his sibling’s grips on his arms and body doing the same. 

 

One person floats above it all, a literal corpse just floating in the water.  _ Five, _ he recognizes, who still looks exactly like a teenager. His eyes are snapped shut, a gentle blue illuminating his body. It’s admitted from his chest and underneath closed eyelids. Klaus stares at him, wondering if it means his brother truly is dead. If his  _ siblings _ truly are dead. With that thought, he gives in. He lets Ben jerk him down, lets the voices overtake his mind. In the ocean, sea, lake, or wherever the Hell he is, his tears don’t seem like anything more than drops joining them. He lets the sobs and tears roll out of him. He lets the guilt of every single memory he’s ever experienced, sober or not, wash over him. 

 

He sobs into the water, eyes closed shut as the weight of the tentacles rushes over him. It’s suffocating him and subsequently killing him, he knows, but he finds himself thinking  _ I deserve this _ without any will in him left to fight. He let Five go, let Ben die, couldn’t just have died when he was younger. If he had, things would have been better, things would have been just fucking  _ fine. _ Dave would probably still be alive. Every single memory rushes over his entire body, making him sick to his stomach. It was like he was punched in the gut by Luther. He had had that happen a time or two before, so he knew it meant that he’d feel sickly as all Hell. 

 

But with these memories, there are many revelations. Revelations like the way Reginald snagged two children from one woman when they were just babies, as one child was dead and the other was healthy and thriving. He didn’t recognize it as a baby, simply  _ couldn’t _ recognize it then, but he did now, Number Four and Number Seven being that child. He watches his baby self scream at the ghosts, eyes desperately searching for his sister. His fists balled and he screamed. One of the many nannies eventually began to just sedate him to get him to sleep, keeping him separated from the others as often as she could. They blamed it on colic, every single time. 

 

He realizes that when they were three, they were all subjected to finding out their powers to get thrown into near boiling water. Luther had shattered one of the three tanks. Diego had held his breath and prayed for a savior. Allison and Klaus both came out with horrid burns. Five had teleported the Hell out of there. Ben had summoned  _ The Horror _ and the monster had aided in throwing their host out of the water and preventing much harm. Vanya had shattered all the bowls, the room flooding with the hot water. Pogo was quick to escort the children out of there. Allison found out her power after a rather large amount of Disney movies that Klaus had borrowed from the older stoner woman down the street that first introduced him on how to make edibles in the first place. His siblings probably thought he had stolen them, but he hadn’t. He had screamed when he found her rotting corpse two months later, her ghost self staring it down with a frown. 

 

He remembered being only five and having acid thrown at him. His father had marked down that he wasn’t actually immune to acid. Fire came next. There were many things that went on that list. Eventually, after two months of bullshitting around, they did learn that he healed incredibly quickly and left little to no scars behind, no matter the pain he had been left with. They hadn’t listed it as his power, as Diego had just found out his second power. The healing, they had said, was probably just a side effect or his body was incredibly healthy. He became unhealthy after that, Reginald constantly testing how far he could go with a wound before it actually killed Klaus. Klaus hadn’t commented, but starvation and certain wounds always left him seeing God and coming to terms with Her annoyance that centered around him. 

 

Everyone avoided his contact, no matter how much he desperately gripped at them and begged them to at least tap his shoulder or  _ something. _ They yelled at him, yelled when he cried out of desperation. They didn't seem to care about any of the horrors he had seen. They told him his imagination was far too overactive. Even the nannies got annoyed with him. Each shooed him away faster than he thought humanly possible. Even after so long, taps on the shoulder weren’t enough, as ghosts had a lot more power than he originally thought. 

 

His drug addiction started when he was incredibly young. He attempted to make edibles more than once before actually getting it right. During one of those attempts, while things baked and one of the nannies took care of Vanya, he slipped out of the room to talk to Ben about training for a moment. However, when he got back, he witnessed Vanya throw their current nanny out the window with her mind. Reginald scolded her with an annoyed bark of her name. Ten minutes later, he saw the nanny again, her neck snapped to the side and her arm twisted in a way he knew is simply shouldn’t bend. He kept that to himself. When Allison’s  _ I heard a rumor you thought Vanya was normal, _ he had just assumed everyone had the power to yeet their nannies out the window when they were angry with them, even if he, personally, could not. No, the drugs subdued him enough that his powers were limited and ghosts were gone. 

 

They didn’t find out his powers until later on, after lots of training. Klaus was sober for the family painting. It was taking hours. He actively refused to look forward like everyone else, instead focused on Vanya, who stood to the side and played on her violin fluidly. A ghost stood beside her, mocking her the entire time. It was just a boy, older than they were, seemingly agitated by everything. He imitated her with much more gusto than she had. She was stiff while he was actively just being an asshole. Two hours later, they all sat at the table, the boy still in his orange jumpsuit that meant he was on community service duty. His hat was partially tossed to the side. Klaus had spoken with him a multitude of times about his death, wanting to know why he was so blood and his face was partially caved in. He always said it was because his probation officer just  _ went all crazy on me, dude. _

 

He had seen the probation officer before, too. It had been on the news years ago. Now, at lunch, he was seeing him, glaring down and huffing. He was covered in glass and just as blood, one hand even missing from his body. It floated an inch away from where it actually should have been located. A long scar covered his nose that still actively dripped blood. Now, though, the man suddenly charged at Klaus, going through the table before connecting with Klaus, grabbing his wrists and holding tightly. His skin sizzles as his chair falls back and he screams. There’s a distressed, _ “Get the Hell off of me.” _ His feet meet with the stomach of the other as he pushes. The man disconnects and suddenly bursts into a cloud of dust. He chokes out a painful cough as his father yells at him in annoyance. Ben and Allison, however, both just stare at him as tears leak down his cheeks. 

 

“Number Four,” Reginald chides as he stands and comes over to where Klaus is holding his hands up. His arms shake wildly. Blisters remain where the hands once were on him. “Grace, bandage him up,” he commands, “We will be discussing his powers after the painting is done.” There’s no room to argue as the android moves forward to patiently take care of the sobbing child. His bandaged wrists aren’t included in the painting, no, but they sure as Hell are there, covered by a long-sleeved shirt. Training began from there and Klaus made sure to always be somewhat stoned during each of them. 

 

That’s why, after Five had disappeared, he didn’t exactly believe he actually saw his brother standing there in front of him, having just fallen through a portal. Klaus had already tried to contact him enough time, sober and not. His family had screamed at him for it already, too. He moves away from the sale he was taking. His dealer was already walking away from the alleyway. He moved forward to speak to his brother, but the words,  _ “Not ready for time travel my ass,” _ echoed through his mind before his brother disappeared again. He kept that information to himself for the rest of his life. 

 

When Ben died,  _ actually died, _ Klaus was in tears when he first saw his brother’s ghost. No matter how high he got, the other didn’t seem to buzz off. At his funeral, he had sighed, stoned out of his mind. “Well, I really don’t miss Ben that much. I honestly wish the little bastard would leave me alone.” Klaus was wearing the yellow scarf he’d stolen from Allison’s room. When given the choices of yellow or pink, Ben had been the one to suggest yellow. 

 

Ben snorted, simply telling him, “Fuck off,” just before Allison’s palm greeted his cheek. She instantly went into yelling at him for not only being high at Ben’s funeral but also pretending to see his ghost. The rest of his family chided him, too, all much more annoyed than he had even suspected. His jokes were typically bad, yeah, but this wasn’t even a joke. He honestly felt horrid about all of it. He started staying away from his siblings more than not. He distanced himself from all of them and somehow convinced Ben to disappear every single time he went to training, which was amazing. His brother didn’t know about his training in the least, which was good for him. He never came until Klaus called on him again, looking drained and horrid. 

 

He had overdosed more than just a time or two within the rest of his teenage years. He could see Vanya falling apart at it, even Diego looking upset. Ben was always disappointed. However, after Ben had died, The Umbrella Academy was falling apart and everyone knew it. By the time he escaped that Hell, he had enough deaths underneath his belt to be able to personally piss off God Herself, who seemed to have no actual control over keeping him dead. He knew that just added to the list of what pissed her off even more. He does remember when he got to peek at his father’s notes. In them, there was the passage labeled  _ The Twins: Average and Seance. _ He hadn’t taken note of it then, but he sure as Hell did now, even if he was dying in water. 

 

His adulthood is filled with numbing drugs, one night stands, and so on. They all burrow deeper into his mind to bug him with later on. His memories come to the time when he first stole the box from his father. He freezes up in the water, spewing.  _ He _ had caused the apocalypse by throwing out that book. Vanya’s stupid boy toy found it, making note of everything. That meant that he had seen the notes saying that he was Vanya’s twin, that they had similar powers, and so on. That meant that if Vanya ever read it, she knew, too. Did she know? Klaus wasn’t sure now, not at all. He inhales more water with the scream, choking. The pressure on his throat only grows tighter. 

 

He thinks back to the war, to  _ Dave, _ and he honestly cries more. Guilt seeps over him as he sees the face of his lover. He sobs so had that the tentacles shake from their grasp around his body. He whimpers softly. As soon as he overturns his boyfriend’s corpse, he screams again. He  _ loved _ Dave, genuinely loved him with his entire being. Now, though, he was dead. His eyes dart around, desperate to find the killer. An older man stands with a sniper held in his grasp. Klaus’ eyes widen beneath the ocean floor as he chokes down another sob. The bullet wound doesn’t line up, which means  _ someone _ killed Dave with the purpose of the Commission. That also meant Five had something to do with all of this, even if he wasn’t actually aware of it. He just screams louder. His screams are covered by the water that licks at his skin. 

 

He prays that the sweet release of death actually takes him this time, drowns him then and there. He wants to see Dave again, even if this timeline’s Dave doesn’t know him or even understand that he has to get the fuck out of there before he’s murdered by someone that may even be Klaus’ brother. 

 

It doesn’t take him, no, because he’s suddenly snapping forward and letting out painful sobs that wrack his entire body. He screams into his hands, ignoring his surroundings and everyone that speaks his voice. He can feel suckers against his skin. That meant Ben was alive, that he was carrying him. Klaus doesn’t dare care about that. He can’t, not now, not when everything is pressing at his mind and he’s being swallowed by that heavy guilt that should’ve consumed him long ago. He pushes everyone away, disconnecting from  _ The Horror’s _ tentacles. He falls onto the ground, just barely keeping himself up as he leans against a building. He had no idea where in the Hell they even were. 

 

“Did you know,” Klaus whimpers out. It’s broken by a sob. “Five, did you know?” 

 

“Know what?” One of the blobs of color stands up straight. Klaus wipes his eyes, meeting with Five better now. 

 

“Dave Katz, 1968,” he whimpers, “D-D-Did you-” 

 

“Kill him?” His brows furrowed. He seemed much more confused that Klaus was even asking that. “Yeah, it was one of my missions near the end of my time in commission. Why?” He doesn’t actually know how to respond when Klaus’ fist suddenly collides with his cheek for the second time since he had made his official return. 

 

Klaus wails out a cry. It isn’t hard to notice the way Ben is suddenly standing at attention. His back is straight and he’s as tense as can be. He moves over to Klaus, getting between him and Five. “Klaus, breathe,” he reminds within an instant, hands tentatively moving around him. He doesn’t expect Klaus to suddenly throw himself at him, hugging him as tightly as his body will allow. He sobs brokenly. Ben doesn’t say it’s okay, doesn’t shush him, doesn’t even talk. He lets Klaus sob until he’s shaking down in nothing more than broken sobs. They tone down to soft hiccups afterward. Only then does Klaus realize that they’re all still in the graveyard and he had been leaning against the entrance to it. 

 

“I hate you,” Klaus mumbles to Five. “I hate you so much… Why’d you have to kill  _ him _ specifically?” 

 

Five raises a brow. “I worked for the Commission. It’s kill or be killed.” Klaus snorts and Five selectively ignores it. “I know you went to 1968. What was his significance?” 

 

“You  _ what,” _ Allison chokes out. 

 

Klaus snorts again, continuing to lean against Ben. “None of you really noticed I was kidnapped by Hazel and Cha-Cha, huh? Diego went after me, his lady cop got killed, I took their time-traveling briefcase, went back to 1968, Five killed the only person I ever actually loved, came back, had no say in anything that actually went on, and so on. Then I was locked up in that mausoleum again and I just… Broke, I guess. I died and saw my life flash before my eyes. Did you guys know that Vanya and I are actually twins? Our mother’s name is Vanja with a J instead of Y. She’s Russian. We have similar powers. Or, at least, Dad thinks we do. I didn’t get that good of a look when I was looking through Dad’s notes in my memories. Oh, yeah, I think Harold knew all about that, too. Luther, Five, you two are actually related, too.” He chokes out a bitter laugh. Ben pats his back softly. Klaus knew he didn’t actually know everything that had happened. 

 

“I killed-” 

 

“You killed Dave Katz, my boyfriend of ten months, the man of whom I shared a bar with and that I planned on marrying. Catch up, Five, you’re supposed to be the smart one with your time travel mumbo-jumbo.” It’s bitter. He’s so clearly bitter. “Vanya killed her abusive ex and a bunch of nannies when we were kids. I was stoned even as a kid. I had my powers since I was a fucking baby. Oh, yeah, and I was born stillborn, apparently. It’s wild.” He waves it off. 

 

Everyone pauses to take in the information. It’s a lot. They  _ know _ it’s a lot. Five looks guilty, which is something they had never once seen on his features, not sincerely. Vanya looks sick. Diego is slumped against Allison while Luther looks more than just a little puzzled. Ben stays as Klaus’ anchor, holding onto him, tight and comforting. Small circles are rubbed into his back. The seven just need to sit, to wait it out, to collect themselves before they do anything too rash. It was going to take a minute or two, but they could do it. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't remember what I was doing here and what tags I should add. 
> 
> I think I'm going to make one more chapter and call it Swimming as a final resolution. Anyways, VOLDIX, specifically, I did not plan on making another chapter for this, but you asked for it and I figured I could continue on with the idea. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Please join my Discord server!  
> https://discord.gg/eGkwayy
> 
>  
> 
> Come and talk to me, too!!
> 
> Tumblr: GalehkXigisi or Transheman (May not respond, Tumblr is a buggy bitch)
> 
> Instagram: Todorokishootme or Assbutt666
> 
> Discord: Shooketh Whomst#2679
> 
> Twitter (SFW): DavenderLav
> 
> Twitter (NSFW): DaveyWinchester
> 
> Kik: AdrienSatan


End file.
